OROMO FOLKTALES AN ILLUSTRATED ALBUM (Hard Cover)

PRESENTATION

When I suggested to the Gudina Tumsa Foundation that I would be happy to prepare an illustrated album of Oromo Folktales, the news was welcomed with enthusiasm.

" I am thinking of presenting a selection of the most beautiful specimens of Oromo folktales, with an illustration preceding each story. I would eliminate the scientific and formal apparatus of my original
Anthology. I would not include the principles of my selection, nor any explanation or ananlysis; no square brackets any where for the words I have supplied, no principles of classification, no endnotes, no references whatsoever. Just a painting followed by a folktale.

"-- "Splendid!" was the reply. "This way even our children will have access to their own oral literature."

If on the one hand I rejoice at the thought that "even the children" will become familiar with the gems of their culture, on the other hand I am not too sure I agree with the idea that beauty is only for the child, and the scientific and formal aspects of reality for the mature adult.

                           "If I could meet the child I was"

If this not the project of any human life? Of any adult who finds, or should find in his or her maturity, not an identity tom from the past he or she has grown from but the booming and ripening. of his or her authentic identity. The butterflies of our childhood have flown away never to return, and yet  Our life is meant for us to seek our roots,

In our appointed direction, and aimed to rise with our sap ...

Our truest past lies in the future -- not the drags us back to infantlism, but the past beckons us beyond the threshold of the limits we have ass signed to our selves, to reach out to a shoreless ocean of mirth and liberty. Too many so-called adults stifle the poetry and rainbows of their childhood, instead of letting the force of artistic grace cross through the scientific and technological levels in order to expand at the horizon that bounds the field of our vision.

And so I dedicate this book to children, from six to sixty years old and above. May they find in beauty the truth that lies at the core of our lives!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Folktales

• "The Valiant Sare"
  
  
• "Legend of the Burka Spring"

• "The Goat and the Sheep"

• "The She-mouse and the Elephant"
  
  
• "The Lion, the Hyena and the Fox"

• "The Lion, the Hyena and the Baboon"

• "The Three Oxen and the Hyena"

• "The Baboon and the Bee"

• "Divine Justice"

• "The Unfaithful Servant"

• "The Three Wadai Princes"

• "Barabeko"

• "The Moving Plain"